SHARE

Drilling down on air quality concerns

Concerns about the air quality associated wih natural gas drilling and hydraulic fracturing are not unreasonable. After all, drilling and fracking are essentially industrial activities, often occurring not far from homes or other buildings where people congregate.

That’s why Colorado State University is undertaking a major study — in cooperation with Garfield County and the energy industry — regarding air quality near well sites. The University of Colorado is also doing a large study on drilling impacts.

It’s also why the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency this year established new rules for fracked wells, requiring air pollution control equipment for wells, beginning in 2015.

The latest news about fracking and air quality was a controversial paper released this month by a Paonia-based group called The Endocrine Disruption Exchange, or TEDX.

The paper reports on air sampled near a well pad east of Parachute. The researchers say they found “numerous chemicals in the air, many associated with natural gas operations.”

But groups associated with the energy industry have challenged the paper’s findings.

Energy in Depth, an energy-funded public education and outreach group, noted that even the TEDX paper noted the chemicals discovered in the air were at concentrations below what is considered hazardous, according to federal regulations.

EID also said the chemicals couldn’t be clearly linked to drilling operations. They might have come from vehicles on nearby Interstate 70, said EID Research Director Simon Lomax.

David Ludlam of the West Slope Colorado Oil and Gas Association questioned the timing of the TEDX report. It comes just as the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission is to hold hearings on proposed setback requirements for drill rigs near homes, schools and other buildings.

Furthermore, Ludlam said, his group has sent a certified letter and called TEDX, asking to see the data it used to compile the report, but as of Wednesday had received no reply.

We don’t know the details of the TEDX paper. But, as with claims that fracking was contaminating drinking water supplies — claims that so far have not been proved — it’s important to conduct independent, careful scientific studies of fracking and air quality. That’s exactly what the CSU and CU studies are attempting to do. If they discover problems related to air quality, there are ways to alleviate them, perhaps along the lines of the new EPA rules.

Meanwhile, various reports say fracking technology could be a primary driver in the largest energy boom in this country’s recent history. It is helping lead ultimately toward U.S. energy independence and to a significant reduction in this nation’s reliance on much dirtier forms of energy.

That’s something we should be celebrating.

COMMENTS

Commenting is not available in this channel entry.

Page 1 of 1

By Bob Arrington - Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Lomax tries to push the blame on I-70. He evidently didn’t notice the study did a baseline sampling program. Ludlam sends a CERTIFIED letter ‘requesting’ data. The data was in the report. The other interesting thing was the data profile tracked two different drilling operations with a corresponding lower amount from the second at a greater distance.

Well two spin artists took the report to task and FAILED – I would recommend both and the Sentinel staff to actually read the report and look at the data tables.

I did miss taking staff to task on the cavalier statement of water contaminations from fracking. There have been two very outstanding and representative cases that resulted in record fines in this ‘news’ area.
1. Divide Creek, where sealing of the frack zone was faulty, the company went ahead and fracked with resulting contamination of creek and wells. It is quite possible the fracking itself also hit the same fault or others as remediation did not stop the gas flow – only reduced it.
2 The Prather cabin water supply, where mishandling of holding ponds result in spring water contamination. If any part of the fracking process causes contamination, whether the frack in the rock or the handling of the fluids, it is the company’s fracking process that ended up contaminating ground water. Fracking is not just the breaking of rock, it is the entire process where errors contaminate ground water. The giant frozen waterfall is another example of this error.

By Claudette Konola - Thursday, November 29, 2012

I was going to suggest that the spin-meisters were spinning without actually reading the report, which has as attachments all of its data, but Bob Arrington beat me to it, and said it better! The only thing that Bob did not mention is that this scientific study has been peer reviewed and accepted for publication in a scientific journal.